Britt Allcroft

Britt Allcroft (born Hilary Mary Allcroft, 14 December 1943) is an English film, television and live theater producer, writer and director. She is the creator of the children's television series Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends (later re-titled Thomas & Friends), Shining Time Station (with Rick Siggelkow) and Magic Adventures of Mumfie. She wrote, co-produced and directed the film Thomas and the Magic Railroad (2000). Allcroft is the creator of Disney's Whisker Haven Tales with the Palace Pets.

Life and career

She was born Hilary Mary Allcroft in Worthing, England. At the age of 16, she changed her first name to Britt as her career in British radio and television gained momentum. She went on to create a succession of programmes for the BBC and ITV during the 1970s and 1980s, including Moon Clue Game, Dance Crazy and Keepsakes. Mothers By Daughters, produced for Channel Four, was broadcast by PBS in the United States. She also worked in theatre, staging shows at the London Palladium and Drury Lane Theatres.

In 1979, while making a documentary about British steam trains, Allcroft met the Reverend Wilbert Awdry, author of The Railway Series of children's books. She said, "It really didn't take me long to become intrigued by the characters, the relationships between them and the nostalgia they invoked." She told him that she wanted to bring these stories to life and made an arrangement to secure certain rights through the then publishers Kaye & Ward.^[1]

In 1980, she co-founded Britt Allcroft Railway Productions (internationally known as The Britt Allcroft Company) with her husband, television producer Angus Wright. It took Allcroft four years to raise the funding for, and create, a first series of films in collaboration with director David Mitton. The first episode of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends, shot on 35 mm film with narration by Ringo Starr and music by Mike O'Donnell and Junior Campbell, was aired for the first time on British television on 4 September 1984.

The series's success in the U K., and the merchandising campaign that Allcroft had been organising since 1983, soon led to further success in other parts of the world. In 1989, she and American producer Rick Siggelkow created Shining Time Station, a live-action children's sitcom fronted by the magical character of the miniature Mr. Conductor, who introduced two Thomas stories in each half-hour programme. Shining Time Station won a number of awards and significantly increased the popularity of the Thomas media franchise in the United States. Shining Time Station lasted until 1995. While the first two seasons stayed true to the railway series, the 3rd season began to drift away from the railway series and began using magazine stories and original stories by Allcroft and Mitton, straining her relationship with Awdry, who panned stories such as Henry`s Forest and Rusty To The Rescue for their unrealism. By the fifth season, railway series stories were no longer being adapted for the series.

Allcroft followed Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends and Shining Time Station with the cartoon-animated Magic Adventures of Mumfie in collaboration with director John Collins. This production received critical acclaim and was seen in many parts of the world.^[2] In 2008, several years after she left her original company, Allcroft bought back the Mumfie library.

Allcroft wrote and directed Thomas and the Magic Railroad, a film based on the Thomas franchise that was released in 2000. She also provided the voice of the character Lady.^[3] The film was a critical and commercial failure, and Allcroft resigned from The Britt Allcroft Company in September 2000, after which the company's name was changed to "Gullane Entertainment". In 2007, her original screenplay surfaced on the World Wide Web. This confirmed that, against Britt's wishes, the film shown in the cinema was severely cut from the original version as shot. In 2002, Gullane was acquired by HiT Entertainment, which was itself taken over by Apax Partners in 2005. In 2012, Apax sold HiT to American toy company Mattel. In the summer of 2014, she announced in her Facebook that she and Rick Siggelkow are working hard to release Shining Time Station on DVD.

Allcroft currently lives and works in Santa Monica, California. Her pursuits are writing, the rebirth of the Magic Adventures of Mumfie both in publishing and on screen, and her work in live theatre. She sits on the advisory council of the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund.^[4]

Filmography

as director

• Magic Adventures of Mumfie (1994–1998) (also voice of The Queen of the Night)
• Thomas and the Magic Railroad (2000) (also voice of Lady)

as producer

• Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends (1984–1998)

References

Further reading

• "Thomas Flotation Steams Ahead" (The Independent, 18 October 1996).

External links

Britt Allcroft at the Internet Movie Database

• "Britt Allcroft Productions". Archived from the original on 28 December 2008. Retrieved 2003-11-11. 
• Article on Allcroft and Gullane/HIT
• Random House – About The Authors – Britt Allcroft at the Wayback Machine (archived 5 November 2011)